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I’m very excited to be able to share my Studio Cake Saturdays cake today!

I am a big, big fan of baking : ) For Christmas I got lots of baking themed gifts including a beautiful red shiny mixer *swoon* and a lovely baking book called A Year of Cake by The Clandestine Cake Club. I chose to bake an Orange Sunshine Cake cake out of this book for my Studio Cake Saturdays.

My bake was the last day of spring term and in my book it said that this cake celebrated the beginning of the school holidays so I thought it was a perfect fit. Also the cake is covered in sweets. Win.

The recipe suggests this be a gluten free cake but I didn’t want to do that so I just substituted with regular flour. I’ve made a few gluten free cakes but I always find they end up gritty. Maybe I’m not sing the right flour – any flour suggestions would be welcomed!

The recipe suggests you use Jelly Tots to decorate – which looks completely beautiful in the book.. But Jelly Tots are so hard to find!! Tooting had none. So because it was nearly Easter I decorated with Jelly Baby Bunnies – which tasted lovely but looked nothing like bunnies!! The book also suggested you serve the cake with ice cold home made lemonade. The dream. So I took a bottle of cloudy lemonade in and we drank that with our cake.

Today is Tamla’s turn, who wowed us all with homemade salted hazelnut brittle. Yowzers! Over to you Tamla…

I choose this recipe, as nothing says celebration quite like a Ferrero Rocher!

The cupcakes:So, I used an 8:8:8:4 cake recipe as the base of my cupcakes (8ozs flour, sugar and butter, 4 eggs) then added 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence, I teaspoon of baking powder and 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder. I creamed the butter and sugar, then added the vanilla essence and eggs, all using an electric whisk. Then I folded the dry ingredients in using a spoon. I made sure I used gold cupcake cases (very important!) and filled them about a third full, then baked them for about 20 minutes at 170 (I think) in a preheated oven.

The icing:I don’t really have measurements for this, as I kinda made it up as I went along. All measurements are guesses! I creamed 200g butter, 1 teaspoon vanilla essence and 2 tablespoons double cream together. Then I added icing powder, a bit at a time, until it felt like the right consistency. It was a lot of icing sugar. I also added Nutella (about 2 tablespoons), next time I would add more Nutella and less icing sugar!

The salted hazelnut brittle:I used this recipe, but added way more nuts than they suggest, as I like my brittle dense! It took longer than the recipe says for the sugar to turn brown, you just need to watch it, so it doesn’t burn.

I like to bake, but haven’t really had the time recently, and wanted to make up my own recipe(ish) as normal I follow recipes from books. Next time I’d bake the cakes closer to the day (I had to make them in advance), and I’d add more Nutella to the frosting!

Studio Cake Saturdays is a project I started a couple of years ago where all of the people I work with on a Saturday take turns to bring in cake. There is nothing better than finishing a workshop and eating delicious cake. Yum.

This term we have a very exciting theme – ‘Celebration!’ Because Studio Film School has rebranded to Sparks! And what better way to celebrate than with CAKE!!

So first up we have one of the Sparks company directors – Dan..

“I picked a recipe that I’d done before. It’s from the Hummingbird bakery who tend to advocate using a food processor to beat everything together – which is always a win in my book”

“I chose this bake because:

– I once made these as part of a wedding present

– they are red and white – the colours of a show my partner has been working on that opened that week

– I once attended an American Halloween party dressed as Strawberry Shortcake”

“I’d made the cakes before so I didn’t have too much trouble – but the mixture didn’t seem to make very many cakes – I was surprised by how little battle batter there was – so maybe I didn’t mix it well enough?”

“Also, the cream cheese icing didn’t keep very well in a tin over the tube – it was very runny. So maybe I should have put more sugar in”

It wasn’t easy to decide what cake to bake for Studio Cake Saturdays on my week.. I did feel the pressure to come up with something great since I had chosen the theme! But I wanted something a bit obscure as well (naturally).

And then it came to me! The cake Pedro makes for Summer in ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ – Awesome!!

I love ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ it is just so funny! My absolute favourite bit is when Napoleon does a skit instead of Pedro – me and my friend once learned that entire dance intending to request the Jamiroquoi song while out that night and wow people in the club. Ha ha.

The base of the cake was a plain vanilla sponge, I used a recipe from my Grandma Joyce, it’s the one I always follow when making this kind of cake. I made a chocolate version of this cake for the last Studio Cake Saturdays.

Ingredients:

8 oz self raising flour

8 oz caster sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 oz margarine

2 eggs beaten with 5 tablespoons of evaporated milk and 5 tablespoons of water

Few drops of vanilla essence.

Sieve flour, sugar, salt and cocoa. Rub in margarine. Stir in eggs, essence and liquid beat well and bake at 180 C.

My baking tricks for this cake are:

* Sieve the flour 3 times!

* Add the liquid VERY slowly! Add a bit then stir, add a bit then stir etc

* Replace the evaporated milk with regular milk – simply because I didn’t have any! Regular milk works fine.

photo by Dan Farrell

For the filling I used a trick of my mums – slice the cake into 3 and then spread jam on one layer and butter cream on the other – this makes the cake incredibly moist and extra delicious! Thanks Linda!

I was SO proud of the way this cake was looking, I’d done that piped icing thing around the edge of the cake and it looked ace! But then I had to write on it in red and it all went wrong!!

I made my red icing rather than buy it and I just didn’t make it thick enough, so when it got on the cake it ran.. ‘Pedro’ looks OK but ‘Summer’ was a big fail! And I was SO disappointed!! (And a little bit grumpy)

photo by Dan Farrell

However, I realised that I have to allow myself a bit more time for the next cake I decorate, and make the writing icing very thick, so if I was to do it again I would definitely end up with a better design – so it’s been a big learning process, which is totally fine. And there were no actual tears ; )

Week 2 of Studio Cake Saturdays was officially ‘Double Cake Saturday’ – because if there’s anything better than one person bringing in a cake to work, it’s TWO people bringing in a cake to work! Yum!

First up is baker of the week – Dan R who followed a recipe from this book..

“I chose Ghostbusters due to the then recent death of it’s creator and star Harold Ramis, as I was a huge fan as a kid and remain so to this day”

“I love this film as it combines 2 of my favourite genres, horror and comedy, in a great way. I also love the creature designs and effects in the film, mostly what my cake was inspired by. I will always have a soft spot for more practical creature effects, such as stop motion animation or puppetry, and this movie was a great showcase for them”

“This is probably the first time I have felt at ease while baking and have enjoyed the end result. The recipe was simple and used one of my favourite ingredients (LIMES), and was very fun to decorate at the end. It was very good, even if I say so myself”

It was super delicious – I am also a fan of limes and a fan of bright green icing!

The second cake of ‘Double Cake Saturday’ was made by me and it was in honour of Dan R’s birthday. I made him a Batman cake because he LOVES Batman!!

I followed a recipe that my mum once gave me – I think it was from a cake that my Grandma used to make. It turns out to be a lovely moist chocolatey cake so it’s a recipe I return to often.

Ingredients:

7 oz Self raising flour

8 oz caster sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 oz cocoa

4 oz margarine

2 eggs beaten with 5 tablespoons of evaporated milk and 5 tablespoons of water

Yey! I’m pleased with how my cake turned out – this is the first time I have ever done anything ‘exciting’ with icing – drawing that bat was quite hard and it took a while but I’m happy with how it looks : )

Back to regular Studio Cake Saturdays next week! And guess who is baking?? Me!!

As a small recap Studio Cake Saturdays is a baking project I run with the lovely people I work with at Studio Film School in Balham on a Saturday. We each take it in turns to bake and then I take photos and blog about it : )

Whoops! Cake on the floor!

But I decided to make some changes this term and make it more movie themed (One of my favourite things to do is to theme things!) So I have asked everyone to make a cake inspired by their favourite (15 rated or below) film.. Yes, exciting! So without further ado lets get cracking! First up, the Lovely Sophie who chose ‘Matilda’

“It was my favourite film as a child. I used to watch it all the time and knew all the words”

“I love the scene in the assembly hall with Bruce eating the big cake, it’s my favourite scene in the film, that’s why I decided to make the chocolate fudge cake”

“Erm my baking experience was.. Interesting”

“I love baking but not having any baking equipment I had to use a fork to whisk and guess the measurements but I think it turned out ok”

“I wrote on the top in white chocolate chips ‘You can do it Bruce’ which is out of the scene, but my travel to work ruined that!”

Confession: I have never actually seen Matilda! So did not get Sophie’s cake at all! But I do now and totally love it! It was a fabulously delicious choclate cake as well! Nice one Sophie!

“I chucked some orange liquor in the topping – as well as the brandy! It is Christmas!”

I like your style Dan!

“This was surprisingly easy! I was quite anxious about doing the roll, but it all went very smoothly, with no grilling incidents this time”

“I don’t normally go for chocolate sponge cake, so was pleased that this one was a bit sweeter”

“I dusted the icing sugar too early, so had to re-dust before leaving the house as it had soaked up the sugar. This may well be because I followed this schedule: bake cake- then go out for dinner and drinks- then return home and remember you have to decorate a yule log!”

Step three: forget all about baking and go out. Step four: come home and remember you have to decorate a Yule log. #studiocakesaturdays